“Kid alone on the porch”

admin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:56:57 +0000

8 year old little Patrick sitting on the edge of the porch across the street, barefoot, long shorts without a belt, swallowed in a too big t-shirt, looking down, staring at nothing, just sitting there. He sits there a lot, in deep thought, and often doesn’t see me until I’m almost at my house if Im walking back from the river. His situation is not good. I’ve never seen him smile. I often see him come out and just sit there on the edge of the porch, usually facing the other direction or looking down. In many ways, he reminds me of me when I was a kid… always a sour look on his face, even morose; I’ve never seen him smile. Almost unreachable.

Today when I was coming back from the river he finally heard me walking to my house and said loud enough to hear (he has this way where he “wakes” up his head as he turns to look upat you, as if he’s momentarily shaking away deepest thoughts and consternation) “What’s up Mr. Jarid.”

Sometimes there are 6 or 8 kids over there, I can never keep count. The little girls aren’t even six yet but they’re all sassy, with their hair in pigtails and feet in pink flip flops and little hands on their hips. The grandma does so much to help out all her grandkids (it’s her house and they stay with her a lot of the time). She works the graveyard shift at a fast food joint flipping burgers. But even though there are other kids over there, little Patrick on the porch always seems inwardly so alone. Lorenzo and me are gon try to get him into GPRC’s Youth InterACTION program.

Old cotton fields outside Corsicana

admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:13:28 +0000

My friend Gregory Joseph (and our two junior friends Foxxy and Peanut (Butter) (his name is Peanut but I call him Peanut Butter) went looking for ANY remaining native Blackland Prairie outside their home in Corsicana. (were unsuccessful, but we had a good time trekking through the brush anyway, and so did two hot, happy dogs. Foxxy and Peanut Butter followed us the whole way. I guess you could call them prairie dogs. Foxxy is the little white dog, and Peanut (Butter) is, yup, the little peanut colored one.

It’s weird traveling through dense brush and trees along a hidden creek then coming out into uplands, and then realizing the entire thing was once a cotton farm, scalped bare. When you know what native prairie should like, and go searching the green countryside south of Dallas to find yourself surrounded by weeds and invasive species — an eerie artificial jungle aside from the elm and hackberry trees and some creekside flowers — you get a grasp of how much was lost. It was funny; we got excited to find a three scattered individual plants of big bluestem grass whose seeds somehow happened to remain in the soil. The Blackland Prairie upon which Dallas Town built was once 12 million acres in size; now just a few scattered parcels of a couple hundred or less acres here and there remain.

Gregory Joseph’s extended family has a long history in the area. They happen to live a few miles outside of town to the west in the country. The majority of black families live on the east side of Corsicana, and have deep roots dating back to the days of cotton. Some still live in shotgun houses. Folks there have been asking about the possibility of starting a Plains Youth InterACTION chapter in Corsicana maybe next year. The story of people on the land continues.

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“Kid alone on the porch”

Old cotton fields outside Corsicana